New Zealand’s first battery energy storage site takes shape at Ruakākā, alongside where Northland’s biggest solar farm has just got the green light. The developments are expected to change the region’s renewable energy landscape.Photo / Meridian Energy
New Zealand’s first battery energy storage site takes shape at Ruakākā, alongside where Northland’s biggest solar farm has just got the green light. The developments are expected to change the region’s renewable energy landscape.Photo / Meridian Energy
Northland local government leaders say a new $200 million solar farm in Bream Bay’s Ruakākā is a major step towards building Te Tai Tokerau’s resilience.
It will grow the company’s energy park investment at Ruakākā, where the company has already started building New Zealand’s first battery energy storage site, expected to be in action by late 2026.
The heavyweight Mayoral Forum comprises Cocurullo’s Whangārei District Council, Mayor Moko Tepania’s Far North District Council, Mayor Craig Jepson’s Kaipara District Council and Northland Regional Council Chairman Geoff Crawford, representing more than 200,000 Northlanders.
Cocurullo said it would greatly benefit Bream Bay in particular, but all of the region as well.
Electricity failure has been identified by Northland Civil Defence in the top quarter of hazards facing the region.
Cocurullo, who is also Northland Civil Defence Management deputy chair, said the provision of locally-produced power was critically important during major region-wide power failures.
More than 60,000 Northland homes were left without power in 2023 in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle hitting the region, with many of those still without the essential infrastructure several weeks later. Meanwhile, 100,000 Northlanders were affected in June when Transpower’s main trunk line power pylon at Glorit, south of Wellsford, fell over due to worker error.
Independent hearings commissioners for Northland Regional Council (NRC) have just granted an application by the company to build the solar farm. Whangārei District Council (WDC) granted its project consents in February.
The facility will be built across three blocks covering 172ha, or the equivalent of about 245 rugby fields, along currently farmed land behind the northern section of pristine white sand Ruakākā Beach. It will be built across three blocks from near the Ruakākā township in the south to the edge of the former Marsden Point oil refinery, now Channel Infrastructure.
There will be up to 250,000 solar panels installed to construct the 100-150MW farm which is forecast to produce 150-200GWh of electricity each year.
This is expected to produce enough power more than half of Northland’s homes.
Cocurullo said it was good to see a major boost to locally produced power on the horizon.
His expectation was that it would “positively impact” Northland power prices.
New Zealand's first battery energy storage site takes shape at Ruakākā. The $185 million development's expected to change the region's renewable energy landscape Photo / Meridian Energy
Construction of the project is expected to start early next year, subject to an appeal period for the just-granted resource consents and final investment decision by Meridian Energy’s board.
Meanwhile the company’s $185m battery energy storage site at Ruakākā is due to be completed early next year.
Meridian head of renewable development Rebecca Knott said the solar farm project would boost Northland’s reliance on electricity generated in other parts of New Zealand.
“We’re committed to increasing the amount of renewable electricity we generate and store so that we can help meet New Zealand’s growing demand for clean energy,” Knott said.
The NRC resource consent application was heard by independent commissioners David Hill and Sheila Taylor over two days in Whangārei in early August.
The development’s resource consent application indicated 17ha of permanent wetlands would be removed for the solar farm but proposed 18.86ha of new wetland creation, enhancement and restoration on the site.
The commissioners said the regional and national electricity generation benefits of the development were not disputed.
“The adverse effects of the activity, when considered in the round and with the mitigation prosed and positive effected accounted for, will be minor,” the commissioners said.
The new development will be Northland’s fourth major large-scale solar farm, after three others planned or under development in the Far North.
Sheep graze under the panels at Lodestone's Kohira solar farm, near Kaitāia, that opened earlier this year.
Lodestone Energy’s solar farm, very close to Kaitāia’s northern outskirts, is Northland’s only already-in-action solar farm. It started providing power to the national grid in February.
Construction began in April on a second, long-awaited solar farm at Pukenui, near Houhora, north of Kaitāia.
Cocurullo said the Ruakāka development was in a location where its power lines network had adequate carrying capacity to get its renewable energy into the national grid.
However, this needed boosting for the rest of the region, as the power lines network needed more capacity to get developing renewable energy produced in Northland into the national grid.
